Help needed with additions form

[Stevegiles]

Greetings to all from a new member. My name is Steve and I am a long-term user (and lover) of the app but I only used it to log simple data about scenes I had filmed eg who starred, where and when shot etc.

What I would like to do now is set up a form which contains the following 5 fields: name of client; date; amount paid; running total of ‘amount paid’; and notes. I would also like to be able to see a running total of all my ‘running totals’ ie a total amount I have earned from every job in the database. Is this possible to set up so all the different ‘amount’ fields change automatically once the single client’s ‘amount paid’ field is filled?

I’ve tried but I just can’t seem to figure out how to do it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Steve Giles

[Brendan]

There’s no running total calculation field ability, but you can certainly create a calculation field which is the result of a formula between one or more fields. You can also set the overall form aggregate calculation by setting the form to calculate the Total of your Amount Paid field. The result of that calculation will display at the bottom of your records list view for your form.

So by running total, are you talking about the ability to see the total amount paid at any given point in time? Not just the amount paid at a given point in time or the overall grand total of your amount paid? I’m just curious as to the need for the running total. I guess a running total field would have to be basically a total of a single field where the records are sorted by the record’s creation date or something like that.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Brendan]

Oh, the reason why I did it like this rather than a new field type for barcode scanning is because in my eyes, barcode scanning is just a different form of user input, like the number keypad or the text keypad. So I didn’t feel it was necessary to add a whole new field type because every field type can benefit from the barcode scanner.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Stevegiles]

Brendan

Firstly thank you for replying so quickly – that is great support.

What I wanted was a folder for each client with their details and a date for each time they had made a payment. Then a running total of all the payments from all the clients so I could see at a glance how much I had earned so far that year. I wouldn’t need to be able to see a total at any given point in the past, just how much up to today overall.

Steve

[Brendan]

Hello Steve,

This sounds like a job for the Link to Form field type. You would create two forms. Clients and Payments. The Clients form would contain all the client details plus a link to the Payments form. The Payments form would have a date and a payment amount and possibly a name and description and photo if you want. The Clients “payments” field would be a one-to-many link type. You wouldn’t want to share payments between clients, so that’s why you use the one-to-many link type.

Then, you would create all your client records, then for each client you’ll see the “payments” field all starting with 0 records. Tapping on that would take you to an empty list of payments. Tap the + button to create the payment for that user. The date could be filled in for you automatically if you set that as a default option for your date field.

Then, for the Payments form, set the form-level Calculation to compute the Total of the “payment amount” field. Then when you view a particular client and tap on the “payments” field, you’ll see a list of all their payments and the bottom of the record list will show you the total payments received from that specific client.

Then, on the top-level of the Payments form you’ll just see a whole bunch of payments from various clients, but you won’t really know which client the payments were from because there’s no back-link functionality (yet). However, at the bottom of the records list view of the Payments form, you’ll see the Total (Payment Amount) which will be your grand total of the payments received from every client.

I hope that makes a bit of sense anyway.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Stevegiles]

Perfect!!!

Exactly what I wanted. This app must be one of the best on the web. Thank you so much.

One further question. On the top level of my Clients form I have a list of all my clients sorted alphabetically, the number of records in the form then a blue bar at the bottom which says “Total ((null)):0” What is that?

Steve

[Brendan]

Hello Steve,

It could be that you have your form calculating the total for a field that you no longer have. Go to the Calculation area on the Edit Form screen and reset the field to a Number or Calculation field that’s available in your form or remove the calculation altogether.

Thanks,

Brendan

[lgol27]

BTW, the addition of bar code input to every field was brilliant!!!

[Author]

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